56 IN STILLNESS I. I see you sitting in stillness last winter, your figure composed neatly, as if by a painter; was it? Your voice. Testing stillness, trial of a word makes stillness more still with listening. and quietly toward the night, the afternoon, evening light rises and fades, rolling over the details One page is turned, your thought travels over the turn, decided; we breathe slower and sit near. in your room, each day shrinking, and the night longing after the small wintry sun trending west. 2. AND OUTSIDE like a wind rising, a cloak swirling, its silent hem furling, unfurling, dragging at the legs, At six, when your lamp flares on the desk, steadies itself on its lead foot, the perspective alters, is reversed. that threat paces the street, hesitating at each stoop, the quickening of sickness in your heart's blood; Pausing at the door, I am drawn in. I hover behind your back, a visiting shape. From the shut window I know you know a fearful opposition, mounting floor after floor after floor after floor, the ten turns darkness draws us, inside out-repeating the study, your books, our intent figures onto the black glass. turning the five landings of your particular stair, like a Gothic beast, you said, the heaving approach, I see you working in stillness, the order of the room increases without adjustment, steadily increases, and when it lodges behind the kitchen wall that wall weeps a sensation of its sick terror, whining, scratching, and the room tenses. And we are braced I think of you writing, and the pressure of your hand. and then as if it were that same beast howling in the voice of your neighbor's hound you rouse You are making a translation-truthful, careful words, word by word, your reflection steady, your stumbling body, you pound the plaster, enraged, driving home this murderous, careless brutality your green lampshade a tiny furnace, your mind burning in the heat of pursuit. After a word. Spoken. What at the government's expense-to re- peat their complaints to the Pope. In front of the elevated altar, a crowd of three or four thousand spilled out across a broad field at the center of the campus. Hundreds of people from Chalatenango, the country's north- ernmost province, had arrived the day before and had slept overnight on the grass. "The Jesuits spent much time in the villages of Chalatenango," one of the local priests told me. "In one way or another, all these people knew them." As the Mass got under way, a night breeze began to rustle the leaves of the tall eucalyptus trees ringing the field, but it was still quite hot, and the cele brants perspired beneath their vest- ments. At the offertory, eight small apothecary jars were brought to the stage and set on the altar, each labelled with the name of one of the victims: Elba Ramos; Celina Ramos; Fathers Amando López Quintana, Ignacio Ellacuría, Juan Ramón Moreno Pardo, Ignacio Martín-Baró, Segundo Mon- tes Mozo, and J oaquín López y López. Within the jars were soil, dried grass, in league with mortal illness disturbing your peace. -JEAN ALICE JACOBSON . . twigs, and other matter soaked with blood, which had been collected from the site after the bodies were removed. Archbishop Weakland-a man who prides himself on keeping his emotions in check-was startled to find that his body was covered with gooseflesh. The next day, after a morning spent at the joint military high command tediously duplicating paperwork that had already been filled out in order to obtain a salvaconducto, the delegation set out on the Via Dolorosa that Church people who come to El Salvador cus- tomarily take. The most recent addi- tions to the tour-which grows longer with the years and the deaths-are a walk through the Jesuits' residence, a visit to a small museum beside the chapel, and, finally, a stop at a grassy area behind the residence, where most of the bodies were found. Father Jesus Sariego, the Jesuits' local director of religious formation, recounted the events of the night of November 16, 1989, in a voice so measured and lacking in any trace of the maudlin that he might have been describing an exhibit of pre- Columbian art. Soldiers had massed on the edge of the U .C.A. campus that night, he told us, and had shot into the air, simulating a pitched battle with F.M.L.N. guerrillas, who had launched an audacious offensive in San Salvador a few days before. It was a moonless night, and in the darkness about sev- enty troops divided into two units and moved on the residence. Some battered on the front door-a sturdy one, made of metal-and one of the Jesuits even- tually opened it, imploring the troops not to destroy it. The other group negotiated a network of paths and passageways between campus build- ings (a route of such intricacy that it indicated that the operation had been well planned and practiced), scaled a fence, and approached the residence from the rear. The two women, Elba and Celina Ramos, were killed first. Ironically, they had been spending the night there for safety. The soldiers shot both of them in the head and then put their M-16s under the women's dresses and virtually disembowelled them. Five of